Away
by Alias addict
Summary: 'Everything you've ever wanted you've run away from...'


"He told me he loved me, Sydney! He looked into my eyes and told me he loved me!" Francie whispers, clutching my hand as tears floated down her raw cheeks. "I know, sweetie, I know. He's evil. Forget him." I hand Francie another glass of wine and take another for myself. I know I should be more sympathetic- her boyfriend dumped her, she had a bad day, I'm her best friend. But after two hours even my fake sympathy is beginning to wear thin. And we're almost to the last fourth of Francie's favorite wine. Even thought I don't really care to continue drinking it, I find it's the only way I can at least keep my head on straight. Besides the fact that the room spins every so often. Francie takes a sip. "It's so hard..." She whispers. "I know, sweetie, I know it's hard." I repeat. "I'm sorry." She says, tears still threatening to break forth for the third time that night. "Did you have a good day?" I look at the difference in the amount of glasses on our table. Francie has gone through about two- in the time she was talking there really wasn't a lot of time to drink. I had finished five glasses, and was starting on my sixth. The liquid burned the back of my throat as I took a sip. "My day?" I ask, taken aback by the question. I hadn't expected the focus to be shifted over to me so suddenly. "Uh...yea, my day. It was...good." Francie raises an eyebrow through her tears and almost laughs. I have no idea what's so amusing about my answer, but all the same. As long as it keeps her happy. "Well, that's fine then. Any details?" "Um..." I could tell her what I did all day, but it wouldn't exactly fit under the category of "good." "I got another trip, but it's to Paris, so I guess there will be a lot of leisure time." Her expression darkens again and tears threaten to spill over her eyelids. Not the best starting point. "But I had a great conversation with my dad-" The definition of conversation being three words. "And I got to hang out with Dixon after the bank let us out." True enough- I went out for a jog to clear my head after Sloane let us out. There are just so many mixed messages, so many different people telling me different things, I don't know what to believe anymore. "I'm sorry for ruining your day, Syd, it's just I have no one to talk to." Cry me a river. Don't get me wrong, I feel sorry for her and everything, but the "no one to talk to" line kind of just pisses me off now. You can't truly experience that feeling until you find yourself with blood on your hands, looking for that one moment where everything went wrong and found it in the one thing you thought would always be there. "You didn't ruin my day, sweetie, I'm always here for you, remember that." A white lie. I've been here about 2 of 7 days this week. Kenya, Australia, and Mexico, all in 5 days work. I'm working my ass off and not even getting any benefits. Like a piece of my handler. "Thanks, Syd. You know that means a lot to me." But not in that way. The man is pissing me off. Day after day, it's the same thing and he can't seem to understand how sick and tired I am of it. Lost glances, momentary silence...the whole thing is just beginning to wear me thin. I can't stand how everything seems to imply something but never does. This game we play, this twisted dance- it drives me mad. Worse then sitting through Sloane for hours on end is sitting for five minutes on a dusty card table desperately attempting to break through the barriers we have set for ourselves. Impossibility is the only way out. "Now, come on, Fran, it's almost 11. You should go sleep it off." "Ok. Thanks, Syd...for everything." "No problem, you know I don't mind." "Alright. Try to sleep before the bank calls again." She said, trying to laugh. "Yea, I will." I reply, irony sinking in as I feel the vibration of my pager. I should really set it to silent. Or throw it back in the ocean. No, but that was hard to explain to Sloane. (Um, Sloane? I kind of lost my pager...no, no one took it... no, it kind of fell... yea, I was on the boardwalk and it fell.) That was probably the most lame ass story I ever made up. Francie exited to the bedroom, and I silently stood up. I should probably wait to meet him until I've cleared my head, but five glasses of wine probably won't affect me that much. I drained the rest of my glass and went to get my jacket. Make that six. The room has only been spinning on and off, and my mind is only lightly clouded. I head out of the house and shrug off the cold as I head to my car. Realizing that driving is probably not the safest option, I head off down the road with my gray sneakers pumping along the yellow lines. It's about ten minutes of sprinting on and off before I remember how far away the warehouse is. I jog to a bus stop and get on the bus, thanking myself mentally for keeping change in my jacket. The bus stops about a mile away from the warehouse, so I jog the rest of the way, always looking for tails. Finally I reach the warehouse- my haven of darkness, the metaphor for my life. When I get inside, I find him standing in the light, always needing to be seen, never needing to be heard. "Hey." He says softly, his words barely overcoming the deafening silence. "Me and Dixon are going to Paris. There he will hack into the main frame computer system in an art gallery and find out the location of the vase that contains Rambaldi coding in the bottom. Then he'll loop the security videos and go and retrieve the vase. At the turn point, we'll switch the vases and you'll take the real one to the CIA and I'll take the fake one to Sd-6. I know the counter mission, my father told me." "Ok good." Obviously he couldn't detect the faint trace of sarcasm, the dropped annoyance in my voice. Obviously he couldn't detect anything... "Yeah, like you didn't know that." He turned from the light to face me. "Excuse me?" "You know my father de-briefed me." I challenged him, getting up off the table. His green eyes swirled with misconception. "What are you talking about, Sydney?" I walked right up to him, my hair reflected by the one skinny box of light coming in the warehouse. I stared him straight in the eye and he looked away. "Look at me." I whispered, bringing my hand to his face. I felt him shiver as my cool hand touched his cheek, and for a minute I almost faltered in my solid attitude. He couldn't know how vulnerable he made me. I removed my hand and attempted to regain the energy and confidence I had previously gained. I looked him in the eye and he looked away. So predictable. "Look at me!" I demanded, and his head turned to face me. His eyes were like steel, looking through me. Amazing how he could always find a way to avoid looking straight into my eyes. The one thing I couldn't do. "Now call me by my name." The room was beginning to spin again. "Sydney." He said lowly. I couldn't stand his eyes any longer. Everything I hated, all the desire, the misery, the endless torture- I could see it reflected in his eyes, I could see how everything came down to one thing and that one thing was him. And I hated him for that. "My name. Is Agent. Bristow." I repeated for him. "Do you understand that?" Suddenly he exploded, tearing free from my grasp. "Do I understand what, Sydney? Do I understand that this here, what we do, that it's all lies? Let me tell you something here, everything we pretend to have down here, everything I live for and everything you run to, it's all invisible. Once the covers are lifted we will find nothing. So why even bother? Why continue? Why bother running to me when I'm all you're running away from? Tell me the answer to that! Because I'm sick and tired of sitting here and watching your ignorance, watching you wait for me to say something, to take you in, push you away.... we think we know each other on so many levels, Sydney, but the truth is we don't know each other at all. You have no idea who I am." He turned around and ran his hands through his hair, then turned back to me, far away but close enough in show to hear his muttered words. "Agent Bristow." And so we find ourselves agreeing again, and go back to the familiar routine of me being ignorant and then having him shove it in my face and walk away. But now he was closer, he wasn't moving, he was actually going to fight. This man, passive in show, never one to speak his mind- he was going to fight back, was going to finish this never ending power struggle between us. Was going to stand so close to me that I found myself unable to breathe and I shouldn't be this dependant on him, he's right. He shouldn't be able to do this to me. But I can't tell him that. Can't tell him everything I had planned, everything two hours and six glasses of hard wine had brought me to. Can't tell him what I've thought for hours without him, what I've thought for hours with him. And he wants this domination. "So tell me this." He whispered, his voice sick and dark. Yet even his tone couldn't fool me. His breathing had slowed and his eyes had slipped out of their previous state. I was a trained agent. You didn't miss these things. "Tell me what we're doing here, right now. Tell me why, every night, we both end up in this one infinite point in the universe. Tell me why we center our lives around these moments. Why nothing means everything when everything means nothing." "Why? Because truth lives in lies, Agent Vaughn. Everything unheard of is sacred, everything taboo is temptation. In a life confined by rules, there is only one escape." "This isn't the escape. This is a dead end." "Everything is a dead end at some point. This may be invisible but compared to everything else in my life it's the only thing I still know exists. He took a step closer, which I didn't think was possible. "Tell me why we're still standing here, having this conversation. Why I can never sleep at night, why you call me every morning, why neither of us have moved on." I didn't have a clear answer to that question and he knew it. I walked away from him, only then realizing his hands had been clutching my arms. "Damnit, Vaughn!" I yelled. "Why the hell do you think? I don't have time to play your mind games." "I don't have time for your sick dances." "Since when has this all been me? What do you think, that you're everything to me, that you're the reason I wake up in the morning, the reason I strive so hard to live and take down Sd-6 that I ignore every other aspect of my life? No. I come in here every night and I sit down on this table and watch you avoid my eyes, avoid my questions, avoid my implied truth and yet you still think I'm the one to blame here. Think that I'm is the reason we meet here and lose each other in our own ignorance while the world around us crumbles and falls. No. I don't come here to be defeated, to lose myself in the haven of the unknown and untouched. I come here for recognition, for proof that I am still alive. To prove to myself that one more day won't kill me. So, yes, everything we do here- every breath we share, every tear we lose, every heart we break- it's all real. There is nothing imaginary and there is nothing that rests on either of us after this is over. You think you're the only one who has to live without something? Think you're the only one who comes home every night wishing for something more? Godamnit, Vaughn! For someone who pretends to be so insightful, you can't even open your eyes wide enough to accept the truth when it's right up and in your face." His breath was hot on my face as he rendered everything I'd just said, his gaze and hold beginning to weaken as he was able to finally take in how close we were. My implications overwhelmed him and he stepped back from me. "I win." I whispered. Catching my voice he whirled around to face me again, not as close, never as close. "Why the hell is this always a fucking game to you?" He yelled, getting back in my face. "Why not? You play with me, I play with you, but in the end we both lose. What else would this be?" "This is reality, Bristow. This is life. Suck it up and live with it." Heat flashed through my body and I turned him around and threw him against the chain-link gate. "What right do you have to tell me that? Suck it up and live with it? Let me tell you about my life. My parents were never there for me. I grew up alone and deceived. My mother died. My father left. Hope was abandoned and desperation was the only thing that kept me going. I met a friend, two friends. I fell in love. I scored a great job and was working towards an education. And then everything aligned and snapped. My boss was a basta** who killed kids as a hobby. My job was a lie. My father became the enemy. My fiancé was murdered. And my friends ended up knowing a stranger. Someone even I didn't know. So tell me where the justification in that is, huh? Suck it up and live with it? Let me tell you something, Agent Vaughn. I have been fucking living with it for seven years, and I don't want any of your bullshit. If you want the dominance here, then fight for it. You're a man. Suck it up and deal with it." "This is not a game!" He yelled. "It is to me." "What the hell is your problem? You tell me you've lived a year in a week and yet you still act like a child." "You threaten me in a weak attempt to regain control and yet you're still pinned against a fence." "Fuck you, Sydney." I tightened my grip on his shoulders. "Bite me. I mastered this game two years ago and you're just learning to play." "I don't want to play this god-damn game." "Then you should figure out what you want." He turned to stare me in the eyes, fire mixed with strength mixed with a weakening sense of understanding. "I think you know what I want." He whispered. I tightened my grip on his shoulder, then pressed him farther into the chain link gate, his shoulders grinding against the metal. "I need you to tell me." I whispered back harshly. "I need you to shut up." He replied, his breath hot on face. Both my hands were pressed against his shoulders, and his arms were around my waist, trying to turn around, trying to gain leadership. If any other person would see this, it would almost look like a lovers embrace, a romantic moment meant for Hollywood dramas, a stolen moment. But it wasn't. This was our fight. This was how we won and lost the game that dictated our lives. "You want to play like this?" I asked him, my face a mere three inches from his. "Why not?" "You play to lose, Michael Vaughn." "I play to win." He whispered, then closed the three inches and licked my face. Oh god this wasn't happening... I found my back pressed against the fence, the metal digging into my back where the linking had been unevenly put together. "This is how I play, Agent Bristow. And I always get what I want." He was pressed against me, and there wasn't any way humanly possible to be closer to him. The sense of him against me was overwhelming, but I couldn't forfeit this now. This meant too much. "You get what you want and we both lose." "Or we both win." I turned my head. "Win? Winning is walking out of this warehouse, winning is being able to sleep at night and being able to think in more than syllables when you're pressed against the only thing that stands in between you and sanity." This left him without sound, and I could hear the single fleck of blood drop from the tear the chain had caused in my hand. He broke my gaze to look at my hand, and I could see his demeanor weakening. This was my game. I brought my finger to the cut and brought a drop of blood within his view. "This is how you win?" I asked, then wiped the blood on his cheek. "This is your blood. It always has been. So now matter how many times you've convinced yourself that you've won this sick game we play, this despotic battle for control, a part of you will always be lost." I brought the finger to my lips and licked the rest of the blood off of it. "You want it, come get it." His eyes darkened and he backed off an inch, but that inch was like a mile to me. He was losing his grip. I lifted myself off the fence and brought my face to his. "If this is what the demon wants, then why is he so cautious to taste the fruit that he desires?" His attitude was suddenly shaky. "You know as well as I this is against the rules." My previously set mood almost disappeared. I used my momentary strength to break free from his grip. "Against the rules? Since when have we ever played by the rules, Michael? This game is not about a fucking handbook that you dictate you life by. This is about control. This is about domination. This is the game that lives in shadows, kills in dreams. The game that strikes when sanity is almost mastered and lets go only when the sanity derived from it is almost achieved. We are fighting the game and we are losing. We let the game control us, control our actions and out thoughts, our wants and our desires. Let it control the lost ambition that we call lives. This has never been about you and me." "Then what is it about?" "Does it matter?" I whispered, leaning into him. Almost losing control. He copied my actions, and oh god we were so close... I moved so that my head was on his shoulder, something he didn't expect, but these days no one expects anything. The only thing to expect is change. "You seriously think there's rules down here?" I whispered in his ear, my right hand tracing light circles on his back. "You don't understand that no one but us even gives a fuck. Do you see parental supervision? Security cameras? There are no boundaries, no limits, no rules. There's only you and me. The only rules are the ones that have been drilled so fiercely into our minds that we are forced to pretend they exist. And if this game isn't about us, then what does it matter? Don't you understand the hours we've spent here, sitting on tables, exchanging anything but truth? Has Devlin or Kendall come up to you and talked about our late night meetings? We could anywhere in the world right now, doing anything, and no one but us would know. There's only you and me..." I had more to say but couldn't go on- things were falling apart around me, my life was collapsing, nothing left to regain but him, there was only him and in this one moment, this one undying moment, for this one moment he was mine, he was in my arms, and everything I could smell or taste or think about was him. He was in my control and he was not invisible, I had beaten him and the realization was so strong that it hurt. I had nothing more to say but I was so lost in this nothingness that I could finally see our ending. "Sydney." He whispered, so suddenly that it almost killed me, to know he was this close and we were this close to leaving this game behind forever. He called my name again, whether to me or not was irrelevant. His voice was almost pleading and I could tell he knew it, too, knew this was our ending or our beginning. And hearing his voice kills me. Because I know once we've won we lose everything, and by winning this game I lost him forever. He whispers my name again and again, knowing I'm not here, only feeling the tears from the head that has fallen on his shoulder. Once I return to sanity I'll realize that this game was my life, and once you've beaten your life there's nothing left. Knowing that once I found the one thing I was looking for, once I found the answer to my question and realized that my blood was his and his was mine, that being in his arms made me let go of the pain I've felt so long I found that he was right... I know that nothing real lasts forever. It's been so long since I believed that I could heal, that I could feel something real before it disappeared. All my life I've been lost in the misery of shadows, desperately wishing that someone would come and save me from this hell I call my life. And when I almost thought everything was lost, I was joined in my shadow realm by this one man, this one man to shatter reality. He didn't just hear my problems, he lived them, and every tear I shed we shed together. And so now, now that finally we've come to this, to this one point of ultimate realization, when we realize that there is nothing holding us back but our own fears of loss... now that shadow haven is gone, and realization is free to break our minds. I can no longer look at him and see a future, I can no longer search in his eyes for the truth, and I can no longer cry to him about the things that kill me inside. "Sydney I don't understand..." He whispered, so softly I could barely hear him. Fear was prevalent in his voice. "I have to leave now," I whispered. "I have to go..." "Sydney." He whispered again, sadder, more as a realization than anything else. "Don't do this to me, please..." "Sydney why are we doing this?" He pleaded, still holding the back of my head and softly stroking my hair as I cried into his shoulder. "Don't you understand?" I cried. "There's no rules anymore. The game is over. We're free." "Syd..." "No! There's nothing more! Can't you see... without those rules, without our borders... we'll lose ourselves." "Sydney what are you talking about? I don't understand this!" He yelled, pulling back from me and looking me in the eye. "It's over! There's nothing left now." Suddenly he exploded, his voice filling the warehouse and emptying my mind. "Goddamn, Sydney! This has never about your fucking game, this has never been about us, this has never been about work, it's all fear! You ask me why you abandon your life, why you're stuck in this desperate world of black and white... can't you see? You're running away from your life! Every time you're so close to something you want, everytime you can feel an ending and everytime you're unsure, everytime you look around and like what you see, everytime you actually feel like you belong... everything you've ever wanted you've run away from! So what are you doing now? You find yourself close enough to touch something that's been untouchable, suddenly realize that you can have what you want, finally feel remotely comfortable and suddenly you're no longer there. One day you'll run away and find there's nothing left to run from." His former dejected attitude was no longer prevelant, and he was fighting me again. He was trying to find our answer when all I ever needed was the question. But how was he right? Because he was all I ever needed, and once I had him I couldn't lose him. Once you run away there's nothing left to lose. {Theres nothing left to run away from) He stepped up to me, his eyes blazing with fire, then pushed me back into the fence. "Vau-" I started, but then was lost as he kissed me, anger conquering despair, fire fighting water, him fighting me but I couldn't win anymore. The intensity was going to kill me, and his touch was like fire and ice at the same time. I couldn't breathe and I couldn't think...couldn't do anything that forced me to tear myself away from him, from everything I was ultimately leaving to avoid. He broke away. "Walk away from me now." He whispered, then dissapeared towards the exit of the warehouse. I clutched the fence, trying not to fall but unable to stand. And I know now I never can leave him, now that I've gotten what I want I'll never be able to think or breathe again until I see him. Know that now I am lost forever. Know there's no where left to run. 


End file.
